| In this narrative inquiry and collaborative action research project, I explore how experiential storytelling could go beyond encounters of sharing time so that it occupies a more prominent place in the elementary school curriculum. I focus on experiential storytelling as curriculum at the elementary school level. I intend, through this work, to provide a much-needed space in the elementary school classroom for teachers and students to share narrative accounts of their experience to inquire into the meaning of significant events in their lives and to learn more about the personal and cultural backgrounds of one another.;My research was conducted in a Montessori school in the centre of a large Canadian city. Collaborating with the teachers of three elementary school classrooms, I encouraged their students to share their stories of experience over the course of a school year. Using specific experiential themes such as friendship, family history, mentors in our lives, the most frightening experience in our lives, successes and failures in a school subject, these students were given opportunities to share their stories with one another in a variety of ways. I also chose guest speakers from the community, including a Holocaust survivor, a cave-diver who won the Star of Courage for saving his diving partner in a cave-diving accident, a female hockey player and a Canadian boy who began raising awareness and money to build a well in Uganda at the age of six, to tell their experiential stories to the students. Transcripts of classroom dialogue, the children's written compositions, drawings and other artwork, as well as my field notes are among the sources of data used to explore the multiple ways in which narrative was manifested in these classrooms. In the process of working with the children, I learned about their diverse representations of narrative and, gained an understanding of how to promote narrative diversity in the elementary school classroom. Other outcomes of this research point to the practicality of experiential storytelling activities to naturally tie the curriculum to a learner's prior knowledge, immediate and critical concerns, interests, and cultural knowledge. |
